Are ‘Northern Lights’ Cruises a Good Idea?

Where to ski this coming season

New Zealand’s Winery

Welcome to The Ruka & Kuusamo Travel Guide

Travelling with children is something I’ve been doing on a regular basis for the last 5 years. Air travel, train travel, coach, car and even horse-drawn cart travel. As long as you’ve got decent travel and health insurance, getting the kids away from home and giving them new things to look at is wonderfully restorative for…

I love Ranua Zoo. I’m not normally much of a zoo person, I have little time for animals being kept in captivity. However, Ranua Zoo is one of the few zoos I’ve ever visited where the animals have homely looking enclosures, and really large spaces to move around in. There is plenty of natural habitat…

This year we have been very fortunate to witness some of the strongest and brightest displays of the northern lights in over 20 years in the north of Finland. Sadly, I seem to have managed to be out of the country for every single one of them. However, last night they came out again in…

Living in the frozen north of Lapland, heating ones house can be quite a challenge. Especially when the all heating comes from a log burning stove. But at least you’d think, wouldn’t you, that we’d make this as easy as possible. Do clever little things like store the logs near the house, to make this…

Natasha French Guest post You’re looking forward to a sunny break in these dark days of winter. Your bags are packed, but your dog won’t leave your side and the cat has most likely stalked off in a fury. That’s unless you have a cat like my beautiful chocolate and cream Burmese cross. She takes…

The northern lights this last week have some of the strongest for years, amazing in dire hard locals who don’t go outside for anything less than a full on display. Typical, since this last week I have been in England and I have missed them completely. But never fear, here is a wonderful time lapse…

As if the unsettling under water ice fishing was strange enough, a group of divers in Austria it seems have come up with a new craze: underwater hockey. It’s only a matter of time before this takes off over here in Finland too! httpv://youtu.be/58sa4r5k0zk

I was going to write a post about how much snow we have here in Kuusamo, but a picture, as they say, paints a thousand words. So here’s three thousand words for you. And every single one of them is snow.

What happens when you mix a couple of bored fisherman, an iced over lake and an underwater video camera? This crazy and unsettling video. It took me a lot longer than it should to work out they were upside down.

People who consider themselves a bit of a globetrotter will always tell you; moving light is the best way to travel. You won’t be burdened by heavy bags which can interfere with the enjoyment of your trip. When travelling anywhere – be it locally or internationally – you want the focus of the journey to…